Past Perfect

by Karen Zelas

  Welcome to Akaroa.

  As she drove along the waterfront, she met the first of the day’s tourist buses. Rows of Asian faces gazed from elevated seats over the roof of her car to the harbour, the fishing boats and yachts, and the Onawe Peninsula beyond. Not a thick, shiny leaf stirred on the row of palms skirting the sparkling water. Today Sue felt like a resident, not a tourist. Akaroa was her place, part of her heritage.

  It did not take long to unpack the car. Sue found herself humming “Au Claire de la Lune” as she walked back and forth between Honda and house. She began by spring-cleaning the kitchen, washing down the broad planks of cream-painted tongue-in-groove on walls and ceiling, the cupboards and drawers, and then finding homes for cutlery, plates, coffee plunger and other essentials. She plugged in the fridge and filled the ice cube trays with water. The kitchen would not be as Brigitte had known it, unlike the bedrooms and, to a lesser extent, the living room, which at some time had been lined with scrim and wallpapered. But nevertheless, time compressed and Sue felt as though Brigitte had been the last homemaker there. She imagined her in long skirt and pinafore – as she had seen in photos of the time – sleeves rolled up, scrubbing brush and rag in hand, scouring the surfaces till they gleamed. Sue did not normally take such pleasure in cleaning. Today she was not driven by fury, but by a new feeling she could not quite place, a feeling that left her replete, like a good meal, or a good fuck.

  There was not much Sue could do in the living room until the double bed was removed, so she drove to the village to buy basic supplies – and two six-packs of Lion Red. She was back at the cottage when two muscular young men arrived wearing T-shirts in spite of the sharpness in the air, each with a coil of rope over one shoulder.

  ‘Hi. So what do you want shifted?’ Sue showed them; she threw open the casement window. ‘No worries.’ With one man upstairs, the other down and Sue directing operations, they made a sling and hoisted the bedroom furniture through the window, piece at a time, the cabbage tree adding its complications. At Sue’s request, the men placed the bed in the obvious position, in the centre of the room against the back wall. Claude and Brigitte must have lain there, Brigitte on her back, gazing at the moonlit planked ceiling while Claude had his way with her; must have looked through the dormer windows toward the hills and watched the rising sun kiss their peaks, disperse the shadows and give them form.

  The job was soon completed. Sue thanked the men and placed the six-packs in their hands. ‘Any time,’ said the more verbal of the two. Sue watched them down the shingle path and out the front gate, weeds grabbing at their jeans from among the primula. She would have to snatch ownership from the weeds, she thought; next time.

  The rest of the day was spent making the living room liveable and organising the bedroom. Sue made up the bed and admired the carved headboard. She placed embroidered white linen on the bedside table and chest of drawers. A bedside lamp and a shade for the main light were needed. She thought how Brigitte would have had only candles and perhaps a lantern or two.

  She stood back. ‘Brigitte’s place,’ she said. ‘My place.’

  A breeze had risen and the leaves of the cabbage tree rattled against the window. Gentle tapping, as if someone wanted to come in. Sue thought of her father, her grandmother. So many spirits. And each with right of entry.

  When Sue arrived home Ben was at the stove with an apron tied around his middle. The air was thick with garlic, oregano and tomato.

  ‘Smells delicious and I’m hungry,’ said Sue, pulling out a chair and collapsing into it. ‘And I’m exhausted. Pleasantly exhausted. The cottage has such a nice feel, Ben. It’s hard to explain. As if I’m not the only person there.’ Ben threw her a quizzical glance. ‘I know. It sounds crazy.’ The telephone interrupted their conversation.

  ‘That’ll be your friend Russell. Camp as a cooker, isn’t he? He rang before, all excited about something.’

  Sue picked up the phone. Before she could say anything, she heard Russell’s voice. ‘Hello? Sue? I went round to the cottage but you’d gone. You know what? I’ve found something. Like I said, it happens. In a pile of old papers. It shouldn’t have been there.’

  ‘Hey, slow down. What have you found?’

  ‘I’m not going to tell. You have to see it.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Russell. I’m too tired for games.’

  ‘No. I mean it. You’ll know why when you do. When can you come over?’

  ‘I’m just back. I have things to do here tomorrow.’ But Sue’s curiosity was whetted. ‘Wednesday, if it’s that important.’

  Wednesday was drizzly and cool but Sue was committed. She loaded her gardening tools into the car as well as a refurbished push-mower she had purchased the day before. She took some books and fresh food and told Ben she expected to stay overnight. Her first night in the cottage.

  ‘Will you be all right? On your own?’ he asked.

  She kissed him. ‘Of course. Will you?’

  The Akaroa Museum was the first port of call. Sue had to wait while Clare fetched Russell from the archival storage next door. She passed the time perusing the cards for sale. She should send one to Gérard, but could not think what words the situation required.

  Shortly, Russell appeared, breathless, carrying a large, manila envelope and wearing a broad grin. ‘You’ve got to see this.’ He led Sue to a table in the centre of the room and patted the high stool beside him. ‘Better sit down.’ Carefully, he withdrew a piece of card, turned it over and placed it on the table. It was a large sepia photograph. Sue peered at the picture, faded with age. It was of a house and people. She examined it closely. ‘It’s my house, without the fence,’ she exclaimed. ‘How old is it?’

  Russell turned the photo over again. There was a photographer’s stamp. ‘Probably about 1860. That’s when this man was working here. Simpson.’

  ‘Then … then, these people …’

  Russell nodded. ‘I’ll get a magnifying glass.’

  Sue could feel her heart against her ribs. She pored over the photograph. On the veranda stood a woman, neither young nor old. ‘Brigitte,’ Sue whispered. Two young girls, one taller than the other, stood coyly by their mother’s side. All three wore long skirts and high necked blouses, the girls with white pinafores over the top. At the far side of the cottage, leaning on a spade, was a Maori, of indeterminate age. He was wearing an ill-fitting jacket over a collarless, striped shirt and tweed trousers which finished well short of his bare feet. He had a moko on his chin and cheeks.

  Below the veranda, on the grass close to Brigitte, played a Maori child, perhaps two or three years old. The child stood with feet planted firmly apart, staring straight into the eye of the camera. Sue presumed him to be a boy, since he was dressed in trousers and a shirt. He held something in one hand. The other stretched out toward Brigitte. Must be the gardener’s child, thought Sue.

  ‘It’s a pity Claude and Jules are not in the photo,’ she said to Russell, as he returned with the magnifying glass. ‘They must be away doing something together.’ She took the glass and focussed on Brigitte’s face. A strong face, she thought. High forehead, straight nose, firm chin, hair pulled back – serious but not stern. Slim figure with wiry forearms, and boots protruding beneath the black skirt. The magnifying glass tracked from Brigitte’s feet down to the face of the little Maori boy – and froze.

  Sue was looking at Charlie. Charlie as a toddler. It couldn’t be. Surely? But there it was, the likeness: dark curls, broad cheekbones, large eyes, full lips, a familiar sparkle and inquisitiveness piercing the wariness. Sue gasped. What did this mean?

  ‘What’s up? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’ Russell laughed. ‘Pretty good find, eh?’ Sue registered that he wanted affirmation, but all she could do was stare open-mouthed. ‘Am I missing something?’ he asked.

  ‘I am. Or, I have been.’ Sue bent over the photograph once more. She examined the face of the gardener. Despite the moko, she imagined she could see a likeness to the child. But
was this her pakeha eye deceiving her?

  Who was this child?

  Sue could detect no similarity to the two girls, yet the way the child was reaching out to Brigitte suggested that she was a mother-figure to him. Maybe even …

  24.

  Needing to be alone with her thoughts, Sue declined Russell’s suggestion that they have dinner together. She wandered about the cottage, a photocopy of the photograph in her hand, willing both the cottage and the photo to give up their secrets. But the house was silent apart from the soughing of the wind and the thrum of rain on the iron roof. In spite of having little appetite, she reheated the pasta she had brought from home. She ate a few forkfuls, leaving the remains, scattered like post-modern art, on her plate. After a time, when the meagre facts had been turned and turned in her head and all the possible combinations and permutations had been explored, when she felt her mind was about to explode and wished she had thought to bring a bottle of wine, Sue decided she should put it all aside and do something useful.

  She brought in a few logs from the woodpile and lit the wood-burner, not so much because she was cold as for the comfort of its flame and crackle. She found places to store the miscellany of household items she had brought over that morning, including a bedside lamp, extension cord and spare light bulbs. She carried a dining chair up to the bedroom to stand on while she hung a simple, cream shade to shield the bare bulb dangling in the centre of the room. It was a fiddly job. She fumbled the bulb, but managed to catch it before it dropped to the floor.

  Stepping down from the chair carefully she switched on the light and was pleased with the soft glow that now filled the room. She looked forward to snuggling into bed later, listening, as Brigitte would have many times, to the rain and wind pummelling their little cottage. After placing the chair against one wall, Sue returned to the living room. Setting aside the picture of Brigitte and the cottage, she picked up the book she had bought in La Rochelle, throttled back the burner and curled up on the sofa. She had struggled through additional details of the political manoeuvring between the French Government and the Nanto-Bordelaise Company, which preceded the emigration, and was now reading more about Captain Lavaud: how he was concerned about drunkenness and idleness among the settlers, and how he persuaded Mr Robinson, the Police Magistrate, to create a law banning the sale of liquor to the French.

  She wondered whether Claude might have been one of the drunken settlers, in view of what she had learnt of his history, and whether he might have seen the inside of the gaol. But reading the French text, though fascinating, was slow, and eventually Sue could keep her eyes open no longer.

  She had a sensation of falling, falling, arms and legs flailing. No, she wasn’t falling but swimming. The black, sticky substance around her, sucking at her, was mud. Flax blades whipped her face. She could see the cottage ahead but could make no progress towards it, until she noticed her feet were on firm ground. She hauled herself out, crawling on all fours. A semi-circle of strangers stood silently in her path. She knew they were mocking her. As she crawled towards them they did not part but stepped backwards, still denying her passage. Her heart was a bass drum in her head. Clambering to her feet, she took a run at them and leaped. They grabbed at her as she passed overhead, but her mud-slippery legs slid from their grasp. Then she was safely in her cottage. The drumbeat had slowed to a march.

  Now it was night. Sue caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. She turned sharply and screamed, a silent, open mouthed, Munch-scream. A man’s face was pressed against the window. A dark face with an intricately patterned tattoo on cheeks and chin. A swirling, vigorous, symmetrical moko that Sue recognised. She started towards the window and the man shrank back. Sue ran to the backdoor and threw it wide. A parallelogram of light fell on the man, as he stood beneath the apple tree. He was tall, barefoot, his shoulders broad and his trousers tied with a piece of rope. Through a swirl of white blossom, she could see his black hair was pulled into a knot on top of his head, a grey and white feather erect in his hair. There was pride in his bearing.

  His voice, deep and rich, echoed around her like the nor’west wind, wrapped her, embraced her, repeating one word over and over again, close and then distant, snatched from her – ‘t-i-p-u-n-a-a-a-a-a’ – dying, as the wind.

  Sue woke with a start, panic in her throat. A deep chill had entered her and she was trembling. She paused, taking in her surroundings. The burner had all but extinguished. At first she could not move, but eventually willed herself to slide forward out of the armchair, open the glass door and feed logs into the burner. She struggled to remember her dream. The distress returned with the images, but she felt she needed to hold on to the fragments and try to weave meaning from them. The burner crackled as the fire burst into life.

  Sue had thought she was discovering herself. She had discovered she was of French extraction and was coming to understand the nuances of meaning that held. Now suddenly she did not know herself again. The facts required reorientation, a whole new perspective. Could her marriage, her family, cope with another upheaval?

  Exhausted, she dragged herself up the steep steps to bed.

  Sue left Akaroa early next morning. She had slept little, turning over the meagre facts in her head and trying to work out how to proceed.

  Maybe the child was Brigitte’s. Brigitte and … the gardener? And the circumstances of the conception: child of passion or child of rape? If rape, Brigitte must have looked at that cherub face every day and been reminded of her violation. Did Claude reject Brigitte when the child was born? She could not have pretended the baby was his. But she was still living in the house they had built. Perhaps if she had been raped by a native, she would have had the sympathy and support of her husband and community. But could one be sure?

  Sue felt so close to Brigitte; it was a numinous feeling that could not be translated into words, but which twisted and gripped, a cramp that threatened to drag her down and drown her.

  Then another scenario came to her: maybe Brigitte had married again.

  On arriving in Christchurch, Sue went straight to the library; it had not occurred to her before to check the early marriage records.

  And there it was:

  1st September 1858. Tātahi and Brigitte Dujardin.

  A French woman marrying a Maori – that must have caused a stir in the community, Sue thought. Wondering when the baby had been born, she turned again to the birth records, this time looking for the surname

  Tātahi. She found the entry she was seeking:

  Waihau Tātahi. Born 27 January 1858; Father: Tātahi; Mother: Brigitte Dujardin.

  Born before they had married.

  Waihau. With her Charlie’s face. A shiver of excitement and fear passed through Sue. She stood, arms clutched about her, and paced the room, oblivious to the other microfiche users. The pieces were coming together.

  But what had happened to Claude? She was working feverishly now. She turned to the death records, starting from the date of the birth of Catherine Marie Dujardin, Brigitte’s younger daughter, and working her way forward. Left to right, up and down, the columns of entries. After an hour, her head was swimming. She left the darkened room and took a turn through the library, but drove herself back to the microfiche room. Shortly her perseverance was rewarded. But what she found was not what she had been searching for.

  1854. 4th August. Jules Etienne Dujardin.

  Sue gasped. Jules. Dead. Poor Brigitte. She did a rapid calculation.

  ‘Thirteen years old,’ she whispered. Little more than a boy. Younger than her Jason. In those days, he would have been considered a man at thirteen; he would have been doing a man’s job. She remembered a plaque in the old French cemetery that said some of the earliest deaths had been from drowning. Was this how Jules had died?

  Sue continued to follow the death records, year by year. By lunchtime, she had discovered the final piece of the complex puzzle: 1858. 3rd March. Claude Robert Dujardin had died. Little more than a month aft
er Brigitte’s and Tātahi’s son was born.

  But even assembling the pieces, there remained a mystery. Sue told herself she must be resigned to never knowing the full story.

  When she arrived home, Sue slipped, with some trepidation, into Ben’s study. Buoyed by her research successes, she had decided to Google her paternal grandparents. There might be something; it was worth a try. She approached the computer cautiously, as if it might bite her – again. She glanced at the toolbar – no open files – and exhaled slowly.

  She Googled her grandfather and found no entry. So she tried her grandmother.

  Ngaire Dujardin Austin, she typed, then waited while icons jiggled and flashed and the computer burbled. She willed it to hurry, in case Ben decided to come home for lunch.

  Then suddenly the screen filled with headings: ‘Ngaire Austin … Maori Women’s Welfare League … Otautahi Branch …’ This could not be right. Her grandmother was not Maori. Sue clicked onto the first heading and a webpage appeared. A photograph of some women; an historical entry about the establishment of Te Roopu Wahine Maori Toko I Te Ora O Otautahi … 1952. Names, and among them Ngaire Dujardin Austin, the first secretary. Sue scanned the lines of text, hardly believing what she was reading. “MORE”, it said, in a box at the bottom of the page. She clicked the box and read on: “… the untimely death … the tangi … attended by the MP for Christchurch Central … her young son, now an orphan.” A photo of people sitting on a marae.

  Ngaire Austen was obviously Maori and had standing in the Maori community at the time of her death. Sue sat with this information and it made her feel proud. She wondered about the cause of her grandmother’s death, recalling her father’s explanation; she did not believe people could die of a broken heart. She would have to try to procure a copy of her death certificate. But that would mean making an application; it was a job for another day. She returned to the first photograph. There was no caption, and she was left wondering which of the women might be her grandmother. There was one who bore a passing resemblance to her father, she decided, though she looked nothing like Sue’s memory of Ngaire’s sister, Great-Aunt Mary, who cared for the orphaned Bert after his mother’s death. Granted Great-Aunt Mary was an old lady when Sue knew her, but it would never have occurred to Sue that she was Maori.